This invention relates to communication systems, radar systems and electronic countermeasure systems and more particularly to an antenna for such systems.
In the usual design of a given system the antenna subsystem is dedicated to a particular function, such as a full duplex communication, radar, or various electronic countermeasure functions. With the advent of more advanced, highly mobile and limited payload systems, it has been apparent that all subsystems including the antennas are desired to have multipurpose, multifunction capabilities. In the interest of saving development costs, system architects are trying to utilize existing hardware as much as possible, but in the antenna area they have run into problems because of the polarization constraints inherent in existing antennas.